Eight years after arriving on Steam, VRChat just hit a new peak concurrent player count

Its reputation as a virtual Roblox for catgirls, memelords, and Sonic the Hedgehog cosplayers hasn't done VRChat any harm, with player numbers continuing to rise. As SteamDB reports, VRChat recently hit a record peak concurrent player count of 66,284 on Steam—though that doesn't count users accessing it via the Meta store, Google Play, or elsewhere.

VRChat enjoys a record number of players on New Year's Eve every year, when a big official party serves as a meet-up spot for players who then head off to do their own thing elsewhere. It probably also helps that a bunch of people who got headsets for Christmas spend the next couple of weeks living in virtual reality, then put them in a cupboard by February.

Back in 2020 there were so many New Year's Eve players they were mistaken for a DDoS attack and VRChat's security partner shut down services, and that was with only 40,000 concurrents. VRChat is better prepared these days, and the servers seem to have handled the latest boom without a hitch.

If you're not one of the thousands of people who have already joined the world of anime Second Life, you might be interested to learn that it contains such delights as hauntological replicas of Kmart and a Waffle House on the Moon, and a working version of Among Us. You can even watch a documentary about the rise of VRChat, filmed in VRChat.